Thursday, 2 February 2017

Nissan offers cheaper route to electric cars With New hybrid

YOKOHAMA, Japan: Nissan Motor Co has taken a step back into
gasoline hybrids with its Note e-Power model, which the Japanese automaker
hopes will act as a gateway for drivers who will later shift to all-electric
cars.

Nissan’s
battery-electric Leaf, the industry’s first mass-market, all-electric car
launched in 2010, is the world’s top-selling electric vehicle (EV), but sales
have failed to reach initial targets. Globally, more than 250,000 Leaf cars
have been sold.

With
drivers yet to be fully won over by electric cars, Nissan hopes its new
“near-electric” hybrid – which shares some parts with the Leaf – will allow it
to shave costs and fend off competition in developing cheaper electric cars.

It’s a reversal of sorts
for Nissan. When it developed the Leaf, CEO Carlos Ghosn signalled Nissan would
leapfrog gasoline-hybrid technology and go straight to battery-powered cars
with zero emissions.

That
has left it trailing rivals including Toyota Motor Corp in hybrids, a
segment between gasoline-powered cars and EVs. Toyota has sold more than 9
million hybrids since it launched the Prius in 1997.

Late last year, Nissan
launched the e-Note, a compact hatchback that uses the same motor as the Leaf.
The Note operates like an EV, but instead of drawing its power from a large,
costly battery, it uses a smaller battery that is charged by a gasoline engine.

The result is similar to
General Motors’ Chevrolet Volt, an electric car that resorts to its engine for
charge when the battery is running low.

With a starting price of
1.77 million yen (approx. Rs.15,57,700), the e-Note, so far available only in
Japan, is nearly 40 percent cheaper than the all-electric Leaf.

Nissan says affordability
is key to attracting drivers and eventually getting them to upgrade to pure
electric cars.

Sakamoto said he hopes to
eventually use the Note’s new e-Power hybrid system for most of Nissan’s hybrid
offerings – helping lower production costs for both hybrids and EVs.

“Until now, components
including the inverter and motor were different between our hybrids and EVs.
But the new system is different in that it shares parts with the Leaf. This
creates manufacturing efficiencies,” he said, declining to give details.

Hybrid
Detour

The e-Power system is
Nissan’s second foray into hybrids.

It launched its first in
2010, but with a limited range of hybrid models Nissan shipped just 95,000 such
vehicles in the year to last March, a fraction of its total global sales of 5.4
million vehicles.

Nissan has said it is
developing affordable, compact EVs for China, the world’s biggest autos market,
and may use a plug-in hybrid system developed by Mitsubishi Motors, in which it
bought a controlling stake last year. It is also developing a fuel cell
vehicle which runs on electric power generated from ethanol.